This book looks at the cultural and ethical significance of modern-day extinctions and asks us to assess our accountability toward other species in a rapidly changing world. It incorporates the ...
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This book looks at the cultural and ethical significance of modern-day extinctions and asks us to assess our accountability toward other species in a rapidly changing world. It incorporates the particularities of real animals and their worlds, drawing philosophers, natural scientists and general readers into the experience of the loss of biodiversity. Each of the book's chapters focuses on a different species or group of birds: North Pacific albatrosses, Indian vultures, an endangered colony of penguins in Australia, Hawaiian crows and the iconic whooping cranes of North America. The book takes stock of what is lost when a life form disappears from the world, describing the wide-ranging ramifications that ripple out to implicate a number of human and more-than-human others. It intimately explores what life is like for those animals who must live on the edge of extinction, balanced between life and oblivion, taking care of their young and grieving for their dead. It includes real-life accounts from scientists and local communities at the forefront of these developments. The species the book covers are brought to life as fully realized characters enmeshed in complex and precarious ways of life.Less

Flight Ways : Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction

Thom van Dooren

Published in print: 2014-06-03

This book looks at the cultural and ethical significance of modern-day extinctions and asks us to assess our accountability toward other species in a rapidly changing world. It incorporates the particularities of real animals and their worlds, drawing philosophers, natural scientists and general readers into the experience of the loss of biodiversity. Each of the book's chapters focuses on a different species or group of birds: North Pacific albatrosses, Indian vultures, an endangered colony of penguins in Australia, Hawaiian crows and the iconic whooping cranes of North America. The book takes stock of what is lost when a life form disappears from the world, describing the wide-ranging ramifications that ripple out to implicate a number of human and more-than-human others. It intimately explores what life is like for those animals who must live on the edge of extinction, balanced between life and oblivion, taking care of their young and grieving for their dead. It includes real-life accounts from scientists and local communities at the forefront of these developments. The species the book covers are brought to life as fully realized characters enmeshed in complex and precarious ways of life.